From long-time ISE faculty member, Peter Staudenmeier, now a professor at Marquette University: Between Occultism and Nazism: Anthroposophy and the Politics of Race in the Fascist Era The relationship between Nazism and occultism has been an object of fascination and speculation for decades. Peter Staudenmaier’s Between Occultism and Nazism provides a detailed historical examination centered …

From long-time ISE faculty member, Peter Staudenmeier, written for the Lexicon pamphlet series sponsored by the Institute for Anarchist Studies. This was originally posted in March 2014 and revised in August 2015: In ancient myths of paradise, people lived in boundless plenty without work or want. The fruits of the earth were freely available to …

In June, 1910, Rudolf Steiner, the founder of anthroposophy, began a speaking tour of Norway with a lecture to a large and attentive audience in Oslo. The lecture series was titled “The Mission of National Souls in Relation to Nordic-Germanic Mythology.” In the Oslo lectures Steiner presented his theory of “folk souls” or “national souls” …

(co-written with Peter Zegers) Reply to Peter Normann Waage, “Humanism and Polemical Populism” “Anthroposophy and Ecofascism” has sparked a debate within Scandinavian humanist circles, with some authors like Peter Normann Waage lining up to defend anthroposophy as a harmless variant of humanism. 1 While we are encouraged by this long overdue debate, we are troubled …

(co-written with Peter Zegers) Reply to Peter Normann Waage, New Myths About Rudolf Steiner “The Steiner I know,” writes Peter Normann Waage, was the nicest guy you ever met. 1 He couldn’t possibly have said and done all those nasty things Staudenmaier and Zegers say he did. It’s just not like him. Why, look at …

Reply to Göran Fant, “The Art of Turning White into Black” Göran Fant says that he is unable to recognize the portrait of anthroposophy that I painted in my article “Anthroposophy and Ecofascism.” (1) I am not surprised that he found my portrait hard to swallow, since Fant is convinced that anthroposophy is by definition …

The economic and political doctrines of German occultist Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925), the founder of Anthroposophy, are often referred to as ‘social threefolding’ or ‘the threefold commonwealth’. Many of Steiner’s admirers view his social teachings as a promising part of an alternative economic vision, one that can lead us away from both the ravages of untrammeled …

[The following three articles – “Mythologizing Kosovo,” “Selective Indignation: Achilles Heel of the Left,” and “Viewing the Balkans from a Distance” – were written in 2000 and 2001 as part of an exchange with Marxist-Humanist author Peter Hudis. The exchange was supposed to appear in a collection of left debates on Kosovo edited by my …

Reply to Peter Hudis Peter Hudis is no longer sure where he stands. At first he demanded that leftists everywhere actively support the Kosovo Liberation Army, the foremost expression of contemporary pan-Albanian nationalism. Now he tells us that “nowhere in my essay did I express support for “Albanian nationalism” or indeed for any kind of …